


i want you more than i need you

by lavenderseaslug



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, slime puppy with angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24988627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderseaslug/pseuds/lavenderseaslug
Summary: It was a fucking joke. That’s all it was. A fucking joke and then Gerri got fired.
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 34
Kudos: 92





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey the world is on fire in a million ways, let's do some escapism and read about dummies with feelings. there are chapters. they will be updated, and we'll know the schedule for updating when it's all over. title lyrics from "waiting" by alice boman.

_Well if I'm the reason you get mad  
_ _Consider if you never had  
_ _A reason to get quite so angry for at all_  
\- Reasons (Bombadil)

It was a fucking _joke_. That’s all it was. A fucking joke and then Gerri got fired.

The words left his mouth, and every thumb-sitting, toothless old man just sat there staring. Like they believed Gerri actually sold all the former ATN news anchors into sexual slavery and put it down as “Extra Income” on the tax forms. _Maybe_ it was bad timing, because they just found out what happened to a bunch of women on the cruise ships, but. It’s fucking Gerri. Like she’d ever do anything like - well, like she’d ever do _anything_. He said the words and immediately saw everyone second guess Gerri, worry fluttering behind ever fucking eyelid.

“You’re out, Gerri.” The words almost echoed in the boardroom. Roman wishes he had a pin to drop. Probably seems like the only logical conclusion to the horde of barely evolved amphibians sitting around the table. They’re, like, a world away from Logan Roy’s Royco, when he and Gerri were un-fucking-touchable. When Boar on the Floor was par for the course. Now it’s tip-toeing and safe routes and whatever the fuck, and he just can’t tell a _joke_ anymore. He almost misses Kendall telling him to shut the fuck up and Logan just grimacing and then pretending Roman hadn’t spoken at all.

“You realize his mouth is the same as his ass and he was just spouting shit?” she asks, clipped voice, steel spine. There’s not even a hint of amusement in her eyes, the dancing little shifty look when he’s at his most incorrigible and she’s trying not to smile.

“We just aren’t going to risk it, Gerri. Not if there’s any truth there. Thank you for your years of service.” That’s all it takes, and she’s out.

To her credit, she stays fucking cool, doesn’t even argue, just pushes back her chair, stops it with a firm hand from spinning too far away from the table. They’ve probably been looking for an excuse to get Logan Roy’s number two out for ages, and he gave them the opportunity. She’s got that stony fucking face, an Easter Island lawyer, if Easter Island statues had any sex appeal. It’s the face she gets when he’s being an absolute idiot. This probably takes the cake. Her watchband bites just slightly into the flesh at her wrist, and he can think of all the times he’s removed the leather strap, mouthing against the skin where it rested.

She doesn’t even look his way as she leaves the room. Not even a brief glance to let him know they’ll be all right. He palms his phone in his pocket, hoping it’ll buzz, that there will be a text telling him to come over, to follow her, to quit. He knows that _she_ knows he would do anything she told him to.

There’s nothing.

He thinks about texting her, taps the screen of his phone with his forefinger, taps his whole phone against his desk, never lets his phone stray too far from his hand. Doesn’t even know what he’d say. “Sorry I’m a fucking idiot?” She’s had to hear apologies for that a thousand times before, like, every day. Sometimes three times a day if he’s really on a roll.

One evening, he has the car drive him past her apartment building, makes the driver idle while he cranes out the window and stares up at her window. The lights are off, and he doesn’t actually know what that means because it’s 9:30 at night and maybe that’s her bedtime when she’s unemployed and when she doesn’t have a little fucksnake coming around to be berated by her.

Maybe she’s out having drinks somewhere. Maybe she’s in the bathtub. Maybe she’s having a drink in the bathtub. His dick twitches at the thought and he tells the driver to take him home.

He jerks off into a pile of dirty laundry because he tells himself he can still smell Gerri’s perfume on one of his shirts.

-

Gerri isn’t the only one he hasn’t heard from. Kendall and Logan are locked up in the penthouse pulling each other’s penises or whatever it is they do in their meetings, and Shiv and Tom haven’t answered his calls in weeks. Roman never actually put Connor’s number in his phone, because it’s a fun game to make Connor repeat the ten digits as many times as possible.

He’s so fucking lonely and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He calls Tabitha once but she hangs up on him, doesn’t even let him leave a voicemail. A woman lets him buy her drinks at a bar, but leaves as soon as he suggests they go somewhere else together. It feels like the year he spent doing whatever with Gerri was a year where he lost any social cache he once had. He has to assume this is what it feels like to be Kendall, just endlessly walking into rooms and no one fucking cares.

He goes into the office and stares at his computer and no one asks him to do anything or checks on his work. It’s bonkers to think that a year ago, that would’ve been enough. It would’ve been incredible, even. Stacks on stacks on stacks without lifting a finger, but now it bothers him, that no one expects anything of him. Gerri broke him.

Or she fixed him. He doesn’t know which.

He thinks that’s why it hurts so much when he reads that she’s taken a job with Nan fucking Pierce.

That’s what makes him pick up the phone to call her, his fingers moving to her number with muscle memory, without thought.

“What the fuck?” he says as soon as he hears the line pick up.

“How nice to hear from you,” she says, and her tone is just so smooth, so _cool_ , like she’s got fucking ice water for spit.

“Nan Pierce?” He’s pacing around his office, and probably giving the appearance of someone doing actual work, rather than what he’s actually doing, which is calling the closest thing he has to an ex-girlfriend who will still speak to him.

“I wasn’t aware my employment was of interest to Waystar Royco,” she says, and he tries to picture her in her apartment, before remembering she has a job again, she’s probably in an office somewhere. Cross-stitch on the walls and paintings by people whose names he can’t pronounce, and that pretentious fucking family everywhere.

“It’s not,” he spits out, but he knows the double meaning in his words. He’s not calling for the company, he’s calling for himself. “It’s not,” he repeats and knows he has no chance of saving face on this phone call.

He knows she’s going to berate him, and she’s not even going to try to make him come.

“It’s a job, Roman.” She sounds bored, bored of him, bored of the conversation, and he can practically hear her trying to come up with excuses to get off the phone. And he’s never felt more like he has to keep her talking.

“But you worked here for like a thousand years,” he says, and the petulance practically burns his ears.

“And then you got me fired, because you couldn’t even keep your -” He can hear the anger in her voice, the slivers of glass poking through the calm exterior. But she stops herself, reins it all in, pulls it back, and he can imagine the way her body changes. She leans forward in excitement, warms to a fight. And when she’s cold, dispassionate, her body is stiff, reserved. A shutter over her glittering eyes.

She clears her throat. “It’s just a job.” The line goes dead. She doesn’t even care enough to give him a semi by yelling at him, and that says more than anything else.

He stands in the middle of his office for a long time, and nobody even notices.

-

Roman doesn’t like the feeling of Gerri on enemy lines. Of the idea that every move she makes is a move against him, like they’re both some fucked up pawns in a fucked up chess game, only Gerri would never be pawn. Probably a knight. Or the queen. He never really liked chess anyway.

He might not have the strategy or the acumen that Gerri has, but he has a sneakiness that is unmatched in the Roy family. He gets a friend of a friend to set up a drinks meeting with Gerri, makes up a load of bullshit just to get her interested. He forgets sometimes that, for as well as she knows him, he probably knows her too.

She’s punctual, to the point of being annoying, but it’s useful, because she sits down at the reserved table promptly at eight o’clock, a finger of whiskey in a glass while she waits, and he can see her from the bar. He waits until she’s looking at her phone, distracted, glasses on the end of her nose, before he makes his move.

It’s a little anticlimactic; she doesn’t make even a moue of surprise. “I suppose you’re Lou?” she asks, and he missed the way she looks up at him with a squinty glare, the way it feels when he knows he’s being sized up.

“Came up with an anagram and everything,” he says, hands shoved in his pockets. “Surprised you didn’t catch that.”

“I never was one for word jumbles. Emily usually did those in the Sunday paper.” She leans back a little in her chair, pursed lips. It’s a game of chicken, and he’s always going to lose. Moving first, he pulls back the opposite chair, but not far enough, has to fold and fumble his body into the seat, trying like anything to look normal, thinks he probably looks more like a fucked up Pinocchio with no strings to hold him up.

“Why am I here?” she asks, keeps pressing him with questions. The long, quiet flights where they just existed in each other’s company seem like five fucking thousand years ago, like ten whole life times. Like he’s pushed Sisyphus’ goddamn rock up a hill a million times between then and now.

He dances his finger around the rim of his glass, looks up at her from under his eyelashes. He thinks she might have more wrinkles around her eyes, on her forehead. Wonders if those came before or after she got fired, before or after she got her new job, or if he just never noticed. Her hair is still neat, beautiful, silken, but she has it pulled back. No chance of a strand falling in her eyes, no chance of his deft hand pushing it back behind her ear.

She’s wearing gold earrings and a gold necklace he’s never seen, and the pendant dangles right over the vee in her shirt, and he wants to tuck his nose right there, to breathe in the smell of her, the sweat and musk of the day.

Her clothes are nicer, maybe. Or maybe he just thought about all the ways to take them off and never thought about how they looked. What he knows now is that she looks good. He thinks about telling her that. And then his mouth moves before his brain can stop it.

“Just wanted to see if you looked as smoking hot for Nan Pierce as you did for me,” he says, and it’s the wrong thing to say and it’s the stupid thing to say and he sees the way her face moves, the tightening of her jaw, and he reaches out to grab her arm.

It’s the wrong thing, too, but she doesn’t leave the table, just stares at his arm like she’s Cyclops from those comic books Connor was always reading, and he’s about to get his hand burned off. So he lets go, can still see the faint imprint of his touch on her skin, feels his heart lurch sideways at the idea of some mark that identifies them as each other’s.

Not that they’re anything to each other any more.

“I look how I look, Roman,” she says, and he thinks about begging for her to say “Rome,” just once, so he can hear how it sounds again. His memory fails, all the time, every night, with his hand on his cock, his face pressed into the pillow. He can never duplicate her voice, no matter how hard he tries.

He takes a sip of his gin and tonic, coughs, sputters, hits his fist against his collarbone, knows he looks like a red-faced moron and she’s sitting across from him like a fucking perfect statue, like the female version of the David, or whatever, except wearing clothes. “Well,” he says, when he’s caught his breath. “You look okay.”

That’s what makes her eyebrow quirk, what makes her bite back a smile. It’s the only weapon he has. The only one he knows how to use, anyway.

“So are you making me a job offer? Trying to lure me away from a job that doesn’t give people brain aneurysms or play shitty mind games with the best employees?” She’s sliding her drink back and forth along its condensation ring, a small pool of water between her hands. The closest she comes to fidgeting.

“Nan _doesn’t_ play mind games? God, that sounds boring. Do you just fucking nap all day?” He wants her to say the job was a mistake, wants her to say she wishes she could come back, wants her to say they should build something together. Knows it’ll never happen.

“We’re not all crownless princes with nothing to do,” she says, and his dick twitches at the sibilance of her voice. “Some of us have to earn the things we have.” Her eyes flick to his face, like maybe she’s worried she’s hurt his feelings. Or maybe she’s trying to see if his pupils have exploded from arousal yet.

“Sorry you didn’t get born into a rich family, I guess,” he says and it’s cavalier but he knows what he means and she does too. He thinks she actually looks a little sad for him. What would Roman Roy look like without all the wealth to back him up, without a million people working to make him look better than he is.

“It’s probably for the best,” she says, pushing back slightly from the table and he’s worried that means she’s going to leave, doesn’t have anything planned, just has an empty bag of tricks that never had any magic in it anyway.

He doesn’t know what she means, really. For the best that she wasn’t born rich? For the best that she’s at PGM? For the best that they’re here together in a dark bar? He wants to make up a thousand scenarios that all end by going home with her tonight, but doesn’t know the steps that lead them there.

“So I did you a favor?” he says with a grin, and Gerri’s whole face snaps shut like a briefcase, back to that stony bitch that left the boardroom. So it’s not in the past. It’s not that whole bygones are bygones whatever. She pushes her chair back all the way and stands, walks to the back of the bar, where the restrooms are, doesn’t turn around, doesn’t crook a finger inviting him to come after.

But god help him, he follows her to the bathroom.

She’s holding the door open when he gets there, waiting. Every move, so predictable.

“You’re _worthless_ ,” she hisses, “do you know that? The best you can do is clandestine meetings with fake names?” Her hand is palming him through his wool trousers and he knows he’s getting hard, knows he’s hot and warm against her skin, even through the layers.

“I thought it was clever,” he says, and his voice is shaky, and the smirk on her face just makes him want to press his head against her stomach, to give himself over to her.

“Cleverness is for schoolboys,” she says, and she’s pulling his belt through the loops, and he’s fumbling at her breasts, because it’s been so long since he’s felt their weight in his hands. “Cleverness isn’t for stunted men who can’t even apologize for the fucked up jokes they make.” Her fingernails are sharp, like maybe she keeps them longer now. She knows how to drag her hand down his length, to scrape and prod, pinching just so, just lightly, enough to make him buck.

His back is against the door, and he thinks he hears someone knocking to get in but honestly isn’t sure that he hasn’t hit his head and dreamed up this entire scenario as it is. Wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last. Her breath is warm against his neck and he wonders if she’ll kiss him there, if she’ll bite him there. If she’ll leave her mark on his skin. His trousers are by his knees and she’s got him in both hands, she could do anything she wants with him.

He would say he was sorry if he thought it would fix things, if he thought there was anything to be gained. But Roys don’t apologize, Roys don’t give ground. And that’s the lesson he’s been taught as long as he’s been alive. But he would say sorry if it meant she’d come back. Whatever that means for her. Whatever that means for them.

“Is that what you want?” he asks, close enough that he could rest his forehead on her shoulder, her hand gripping him, holding him like she could break him. “An apology?”

“What do _you_ want, Roman?” she asks, tugging at him, thumb circling the head of his cock, and it’s almost enough for him to come.

He doesn’t know what he wants, doesn’t have the balls to say it - besides they’re cupped in her hand anyway. She has all the power. So he doesn’t say anything, just stares at her for a long moment, those clear blue eyes staring through him, shooting right past him like she’s just looking at the whorls in the wood of the door. Or maybe she’s just seeing him for what he is: nothing.

She leaves him with his pants down, wipes her hand off on his jacket, and doesn’t look back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the pandemic/isolation is rotting my brain, y'all and writing is hard and who knows if it's good or bad. i just know it's words. and they are for all of you.
> 
> also to the person who once suggested i write roman and gerri in a long car ride - this one's especially for you (sort of).

_We won't both get our way  
_ _If we do, it won't be tonight anyway_  
_So I hold you by the jaw  
_ _And kiss you to be sure_

Wild Heart (Mumford & Sons)

He starts texting Gerri again. Just every once in a while, at first. Just when he thinks about her. Well, not as often as he thinks about her but, like. A normal amount. He’s not a total freak. She doesn’t usually text back, not until he’s sent about seven texts, a stacked wall of embarrassment, but he lost the ability for shame a long time ago.

_What are you wearing?_

_Lunch?_

_What’s on under your suit?_

_Drinks?_

_Let’s meet at 8pm_

_Fuck I meant to text that to someone else. Don’t meet me anywhere._

_Unless you want._

**I’m busy.**

It’s a brush-off, but it’s something. She’s not just ignoring him. And that means he won’t stop. He’s never been one to take a hint, not really. Hints are just for freaks who like scavenger hunts. He wonders idly if Baird ever did a scavenger hunt, like one of those really dumb lovey-dovey “find all the places we did shit together” scavenger hunts. He wishes he could remember anything about Baird besides the fact that he did that whole thing with the turtles. Or the tortoises. Or whatever the fuck.

The point is that he doesn’t know anything about the guy. Not that he thinks Gerri’s comparing the two of them. Probably. They don’t have anything in common. Except being rich. And working for Waystar Royco.

Baird was Siobhan’s fucking godfather. And now Roman’s fucking Siobhan’s godmother.

Well not _now_. But he was. Sort of. And maybe will again. Maybe. If he’s very, very lucky.

_Did you see that new show on Netflix?_

_It’s insane_

_Like stupid._

_Do you have Netflix even?_

_Do you want my password?_

_Make your own profile, I don’t want you messing up my recommendations._

**When do you think I have time to watch TV?**

It’s a question. Practically a fucking engraved invitation for conversation, coming from her.

_Now that you don’t have to deal with me all the time, I thought maybe your schedule might have some openings._

**Yet somehow, here I am, still dealing with you.**

_Just tell me if you watch Netflix._

She doesn’t answer, but if he knows her, and he thinks he does - better than most, anyway - he’d say that maybe she smirked at her phone, that maybe she was risking a text message during a meeting, that it’s something called _progress_ and he’ll take what he can get. Beggars can’t be fucking choosers, and he’s the neediest fucker where Gerri is concerned.

He prowls around his apartment trying to think of next moves. It probably won’t work to just annoy her into forgiving him. Maybe he actually has to apologize.

He can’t remember the last time he said he was sorry to anyone. Said it, and actually meant it.

The thing is, he _is_ sorry he got Gerri fired. He’s so fucking remoreseful it makes him want to crawl inside his own stomach, so he has to shit himself out. It’s more feeling than he’s used to having, more feeling than he’s entirely comfortable with. And god, he hates being uncomfortable.

He buys a bottle of whiskey, a really fucking expensive bottle of whiskey. But not the _most_ expensive bottle of whiskey. Showing up at Gerri’s apartment with a fucking $40k bottle of Remy Martin would get an eye roll and “The queen isn’t coming over any time soon, Roman, when am I going to drink this?” So he just bought the bottle that cost sixteen hundred dollars and figures that she’ll appreciate his circumspection.

The driver knows where Gerri lives. He’s driven Roman there before. If he has any thoughts about their relationship, he’s never expressed them, and honestly, Roman doesn’t give a flying fuck what a man in a stupid hat thinks.

He gets let up to her penthouse because the doorman remembers him, because Gerri apparently never put him on the Do Not Fly list for elevator access. That seems like a good sign. He’s all about looking for signs. He blames it on his girlfriend in college, always telling him about astrology, like that his fucking sun being in Gemini explains every fucking aspect of his personality. Or whatever. She was always telling him there was hidden meaning in everything, if he just looked for it. Like the world is just one giant ass I Spy game. Whatever.

The point is that he gets up to her penthouse without a problem. And when he knocks on her door, he can see the shadow fall over the peephole and tries not to fidget too much.

She opens the door but blocks the opening with her body, he can’t even see past her down the hallway.

She’s wearing pajamas. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She’s got one eyebrow lifted. She doesn’t look amused.

He hands her the bottle. Well he hands her the fancy box that the bottle comes in, figures she’ll know what it is. Gerri takes it with a small sigh, then tips her head, the only invitation he’s going to get to come in, and he follows her to the living room.

His pants feel tight as he remembers the time he lay out on her navy couch, bare as a fucking baby, Gerri balanced above his face. They fucked on the dining room table too, Gerri’s legs around his calves, her heels still on, even if her skirt was crumpled on the floor.

And he can see her bathroom, the edges of the fluffy bath mat where he spent the night the first time he ever came over. He makes himself drag his eyes back to Gerri’s face before he cranes around looking for a glimpse of her bedroom.

“I fucked up,” he says, because the least he can give her is the truth.

“You always fuck up.” God, has she always been this stern? And was he ever _not_ aroused by it? (The answer is no, he got himself off more than once as a fourteen year-old boy thinking about her yelling at him for tracking water in the summer house, or breaking her vase, or that time Kendall shoved him into the wall and his head cracked the drywall. He hopes she doesn’t remember.)

“Normally my fuck-ups are very endearing,” he says, a hand fisted underneath his chin, like he’s propping his head up, and he must look like some kind of grotesque puppet to her.

“This one wasn’t,” she says, clipped and short, and she’s opening the whiskey he bought her, which is better than throwing it out the window - a definite outcome he imagined, if not for the possibility of accidental murder of a pedestrian walking by below. “Do you know why?”

She’s standing next to the glasses on her bar cart, and he feels like if he answers her question right, she’ll pour two glasses. If he answers right, he’ll get to stay. But like he’s some fucking wind-up toy that shrugs every time he’s asked a question, his shoulders are up by his ears, and he’s scuffing his foot on her carpet, and he doesn’t want to look her in the eyes.

Gerri only fills once glass. “This time you lost the person who cleans up after you.” It’s blunt, it’s true, and all he can do is watch her toss back her drink, not even bracing at the throat-burning alcohol. “Good night, Roman,” she says, moving like a sheepdog, corralling him back down the hallway.

As she’s closing the door behind him, he wonders if he’ll ever answer any of her questions with the right answer. It’s a shame he paid someone to take almost all of his tests in school, he barely knows what it’s like to have that gun-to-your-head pressure to answer. She’s the only one who makes him that nervous anymore. Not even Logan Roy has the power.

-

It’s kind of a relief when negotiations between PGM and Waystar Royco come up again. Roman barely knows what they’re about, just knows that there’s some bullshit something or other and Logan wants to buy it and Nan Pierce doesn’t want them to, and blah blah, Gerri will definitely have to liaise with them.

This time, Logan wants the Pierces on his home turf, invites them to the summer home in the Hamptons, has it cleaned out a week in advance in case there’s any fucking dead raccoon smell that needs to be aired out.

Logan and Kendall take the helicopter, want to land right on the property, another buffoonish display of wealth that won’t make any difference to any damn thing. Roman opts for driving, a cool hour and a half if the driver has a lead foot and traffic is on their side. Even if riding through Long Island is fucking depressing.

_Wanna drive to the Hamptons together? Save gas? Eco-friendly and all that shit? Nan Pierce is into that, right?_

He doesn’t expect a response, expects to spend the car ride texting her whatever pops into his brain. Maybe she agrees because she anticipates that as a possibility and would rather head it off at the pass. Maybe she agrees because PGM does have some eco-initiative. Maybe she agrees because she doesn’t want to ride with the Pierce family. Whatever the reason, she texts back:

**I’ll be ready at 9am. Don’t be late.**

He even sets an alarm.

Which he sleeps through and gets woken up by a text message from Gerri chastising him for oversleeping, and it’s not even eight o’clock, which is basically proof that she’s some kind of lawyer witch, but he doesn’t have time to shower or make coffee, just haphazardly throw things into a weekender and he figures someone will iron his shirts when they get to the house.

It’s not exactly the way he wanted to pick Gerri up, but it’s probably exactly what she expected from him. Meeting expectations by failing at doing better: the Roman Roy way.

Her bag is compact, on wheels, very orderly. She’s on her phone when she opens the car door, is on her phone as she buckles her seatbelt, is on her phone as she closes the door. She’s on her phone and doesn’t even look up.

“Uh,” he says, and she spares him a look, her thumbs still moving across her screen. “Hi,” is what he settles on and it’s stupid, and she just _looks_ at him and it’s like being sent to the principal. He assumes. He’s too rich to ever have been sent to the principal’s office.

“Hi,” she says back, and there’s irony in her voice and laughter in her eyes, but he knows she’s partially laughing _at_ him, and he misses the times when her eyes would glow with amusement _with_ him.

“Busy morning?” He looks at his own phone, silent since her text came through an hour ago. He’s not even sure when his dad and brother are leaving. Maybe they’re already in the air. He looks out the window, looks up to see if there are any blades whirring high up in the air. He does see one helicopter but it could be the fucking news for all he knows.

“This isn’t a vacation,” she says, eyes flitting back to her phone, and she’s tapping away and she’s probably gotten like a thousand emails just while they’re sitting at this red light, and he doesn’t even know what they’re about so doesn’t have anything to say.

But he still finds it within himself to open his mouth and blurt out, “Is this a counter-intelligence ploy to find out the Roy plan of attack?”

That earns him a withering look, but she does turn her phone face-down on her lap, hands folding atop it. “Do you think I worked with your father for thirty years and didn’t figure out every move in his repertoire?”

It’s true, it’s how she survived for so long. A fucking shark, always moving, never dying. At least not until Roman went and put his foot so far in his mouth that he could bite his knee. “So you just decided to take a romantic sojourn with me to the Hamptons?” He flutters his eyelashes, and thinks he sees a hint of a smile playing around her lips.

“You think New York traffic and the views of scenic Long Island are romantic?” she asks, and he likes that she hates looking at Long Island as much as he does. It’s just so fucking boring.

“Anything can be romantic, my bespectacled darling,” he says, pitching his voice low, spreading his arms like a loser romance hero bowing to a rescued damsel in distress. Not that Gerri has ever been in distress in her whole goddamn life.

She rolls her eyes at him, but he thinks the quirk is still there in her mouth, thinks he’s going to try to keep it going for the whole ride, however long it takes. His mouth moves faster than his brain most of the time, any number of inane things will come out, and at least half of them might be enough to make her smile. The other half might get him tossed out on the expressway.

That’s the odds he’s been playing with his whole life.

-

The Roys and the Pierces will never be friends. They won’t be anything, except two large families stuffed in a house that doesn’t feel big enough, even though there are at least three empty bedrooms. Roman doesn’t actually know how many rooms are in this place. He just stays in his usual room, at the top and back of the house, tucked away with the eave slanting down. It always felt like he was alone in a cabin and he could pretend he was worlds away from his bullying brothers and his pinching sister.

And Gerri is in the room next door. He can hear her unpacking. She’s the only person who brought a suitcase on fucking wheels and he heard them on the wooden floor. He wonders if she knows where he stays. He always wonders what she knows about him. What she notices. He thinks everything but maybe that’s his latent narcissism. It’s not even latent. It’s blatant narcissism.

He waits until he hears her leave for dinner before leaving his room. He’d rather be late than try to walk down the stairs next to her. He can handle his father making some biting remark about how he doesn’t own a watch, and even if he did, he couldn’t tell time, but he can’t handle the almost sure chance that he’d trip on the bottom stair like he almost always does. Can’t handle the glint in Gerri’s eye going back to laughing at him.

They sit across from each other. He doesn’t know if it’s by accident, or if it was some maneuvering he wasn’t aware of. He’s the last one at the table and half-expects Shiv to have put a whoopee cushion on his chair as a cruel fucking joke. But there’s nothing, not even a pinecone.

It’s awkward as hell and no one knows what to talk to anyone else about because no one at this table is friends with anyone else and someone made the rule that there wasn’t going to be any business talk with food, so now there’s just silverware scraping against plates and everyone afraid to break the oppressive as shit silence.

Which always feels like a cue for him. “How’s your Rhea upgrade working out?” he asks, looking at Nan, certain that Gerri would be kicking him if her legs could reach. “Rhea 2.0. Killer Kellman. She doesn’t have those, like, weird bangs. That wasn’t a job requirement, right?”

Nan puts down her fork. “Is that a joke?” He can’t tell if she’s joking and it’s like some giant ouroboros of humor no one understands.

“Is it a joke that Gerri is a more valuable employee than Rhea? Uh, I don’t know, I’m not the one giving out her annual evaluation.” He smirks while also hating the fact that he ever opened his mouth in the first place.

“And, to my understanding, it’s your fault that your company is no longer in charge of her annual evaluation,” Nan says, pointed glare, slow drawl and Roman wants to crawl out of his skin because he never once thought Gerri would _tell_ on him. Fucking tattletale.

“Why don’t you just run along upstairs, Rome?” Logan’s voice is calm, quiet, cutting through whatever was about to come out of Roman’s mouth. It sends little shivers down his spine, because a quiet Logan is never an especially good Logan. For once, self-preservation kicks in, and he pushes his chair back, lets it scrape against the wood, so loud in the oh-so-quiet dining room. Naomi stops whatever the fuck she’s doing with Kendall even, watches him leave.

It takes every ounce of willpower in his body not to stomp up the stairs, even though he feels every inch the little boy being sent to bed without dessert. He does think about stopping by the kitchen to ask for a slice of whatever the fuck to take with him, but then he remembers someone saying something about blackberries and he hates those. Not worth it to spend an hour flossing.

He lays back on his bed, head in the pillow, looking up at the ceiling. And then his phone buzzes.

**Rhea 2.0?**

_Well no one else was saying anything_

**Silence is golden.**

_Gross_

**You’re never going to be anything but a feckless little boy, are you?**

He can feel the tightening of his trousers, can imagine her saying the words, the way her mouth fits around every syllable.

**All mouth and no trousers**

He takes off his pants because he’s done this with her enough times that he knows code words when he sees them and he thinks he hears the sound of Gerri’s door opening on the other side of the wall.

His phone rings and he almost drops it.

“When will you learn that jokes at my fucking expense are never worth the price of admission?” her voice hisses through the phone. He pictures her standing at the wall they share, maybe her hand pressed against the wall as she toes off her shoes.

“When I stop getting paid to come out and do comedy gigs in the Hamptons, I guess,” he says, and he hears a half-snort from Gerri.

“I’d rather have Louis CK come out here and wave his dick around than to have your inane attempts at dinner small talk.” He can imagine the look on her face, gearing up for a challenge, maybe she’s unbuttoning her shirt now, maybe her collarbone is flushed. He always liked the way her freckles looked against her pinkish skin.

“Well, the point is that no one wanted Louis CK and his dick anywhere --”

“You are just a careless, callous, asinine little _wretch_ ,” she cuts him off, and his hand is inside his underwear, already moving up and down, his thumb flicking at the tip. “You think if you just talk enough something will make fucking sense to someone and they’ll give you the key to the city. You spout from your cock and want the desert to think it’s raining.”

He bucks against the wall, can’t stop himself, wonders what it sounds like to her. “Uh,” is what he can manage, just a drawn out syllable.

“If your hands were good for anything other than getting yourself off, you might actually have a chance at a future, at something you want to do, but you don’t even use them to type emails.” She sounds mad, like. Really mad. Like actually pissed off at him. Like they’re having a fight.

Maybe it’s too much, this thing they have. Maybe it doesn’t work like this. But somewhere, she pivoted from erotic beration to this. Career advice and disappointment, or whatever. Like she expected something else from him, like she wanted him to grow, and it turns out he’s just a dead houseplant instead.

He doesn’t know how to be better. He can imagine the look in her eyes, the clouding over of that clear blue, and then he feels hot semen rushing, gushing on his hand, doesn’t know if it’ll stain the paint. “I’m sorry,” he says, throaty, guttural, thick. And it’s the first time he’s said it.

She doesn’t say anything, just hangs up the phone.

He gets a towel from the bathroom, wets it in the sink, and cleans off his residue from the wall.

-

When he opens his door in the morning, it’s the same time that Gerri opens hers. If there’s any embarrassment about last night, it doesn’t show on her face. He, on the other hand, is sure that his face is about to explode with red hot heat, that his cheeks must be on fire.

He never felt weird about this before. It was like some kind of weirdo business arrangement that worked for them. And he liked that she was fucking _into_ it, the kind of revelatory look on her face whenever he’d go hard at her insults, whenever he’d buck into her hands as she whispered filth in his ear.

But they aren’t business partners now, they don’t have plans, they don’t have anything. They aren’t even coworkers. Technically, they’re probably enemies, if the PGM and Roy factions have their way. But this wasn’t hate sex - he’s done that before. It feels different. Like matching Velcro sides rubbing against each other without ever fitting.

He doesn’t know what it is and that makes him feel all weird inside, like goopy and gross and like if someone poked him, he’d just laugh like the Pillsbury fucking Doughboy because he wouldn’t be able to contain himself.

“Good morning,” she says, like she knows everything that’s in his brain. And she probably does. So he does what he does best and pivots to the first thing that pops into his little mind.

“Remember when we were going to fuck shit up?” It seems like another lifetime ago. Maybe it was a different lifetime. Before he fucked things up beyond recognition and they both had to adapt.

“I just remember you fucking shit up. Constantly.” It’s true, but she doesn’t sound mad about it. Just one of those facts of life things.

“I’m learning how to clean up my shit.” It’s honest, and he feels like a little boy, saying it to her, like he’s got a skinned knee and needs a band-aid, like he’s just laid himself out bare in front of her.

She stops, just outside of the dining room, the noise of everyone else muffled by the door, silverware and stupid fucking small talk. When Gerri looks at him, her eyes scan up and down, the computer that is her fucking brain calculating things he doesn’t even know about or understand. But he knows he just has to wait for the results to feed out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe i should've made myself a posting schedule, but you know what? too late to dwell on that now. i'd like to thank taylor swift for joining the roman/gerri hive and also i'd like to thank everyone for their patience. also this is my sixty-ninth story on ao3 and it just feels _right_.

_You showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else  
_ _Don't call me "kid," don't call me "baby  
_ _Look at this idiotic fool that you made me  
_ _You taught me a secret language I can't speak with anyone else_  
illicit affairs (Taylor Swift)

He has to wait longer than he is entirely comfortable with. He’s not used to waiting, not for anything. That’s the benefit of the Roy name: prompt service and good drugs. Not that he does so much with the drugs anymore. That was always more Kendall’s bag anyway. Nan Pierce doesn’t want to make a deal with the Roys and they don’t really want to make a deal with her and nothing came of that meeting in the Hamptons in the end.

False words and empty gestures, and it all feels so hollow to him now. Like they’re all dicking around in some farce he was supposed to read in college but paid an English major to write a paper on it for him instead. Everyone has their parts, and he was probably the jester, once upon a time. He hasn’t wanted to put the cap and bells on for a while now.

If he’s honest with himself, he’s not even sure what he’s waiting for. Gerri didn’t make any promises, didn’t even say anything to him, really. She avoided him for the rest of the weekend, even took a ride with Nan back to the city rather than spend the two hours in a car with him. It doesn’t seem that hopeful of a prospect, this silence from her. But if he doesn’t have hope, he’s not sure what he has instead. It might be the scariest fucking thing he’s ever done in his life, hold onto the idea that she might not be completely done with him.

It feels like he’s Prometheus, chained to the rocks of one of Waystar’s private fucking islands, having his shitty, shriveled liver ripped out every day. And there’s nothing he can really do about it.

He wonders, regularly, what goes on in Gerri’s mind, what that big, giant, Einstein brain is thinking about. Probably she could’ve come up with E=mc2 if she’d been alive first. He does do the math in his head, wondering if Gerri overlapped any moments of her life with Einstein. Maybe like a year or two. Maybe she’s a hotter version of him reincarnated.

But she’s so fucking cryptic. And there was a time when he thought he knew her better than anyone, when she could shake her head, just like a little, like, fraction of a headshake, and he would know her meaning as easily if she shouted it at him. But now there’s miles and miles between where they were and where they are and he doesn’t know what she’s thinking.

He texts her, because he can’t stop himself, and he doesn’t think she expected him to. But she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even _read_ them. Either she’s blocked his number or she just has a big red 23 hanging out on her message icon, because that’s how many texts he’s sent her since the Hamptons.

He texts her when he’s bored, when he’s sitting in the office and thinking about when she gave him shit to do, things to read. He tries to find things to read on his own, articles that just aren’t about the public’s response to the Roy family. And when he finds something, he sends her the link. Probably that article about pivoting to video will swing right back around to being irrelevant by the time she does read it.

When he’s tired, he texts her too, because that’s when he thinks about her most, about their late night phone calls, about knocking on her door at any hour and knowing she’d let him in. Those are the messages that are just so fucking embarrassing to think about. Like he’s a ninth grader in love with his English teacher and is just waving his hand around trying to get her attention.

Surprisingly, stupidly, the text that she responds to is one he sends at nine-thirty on a Thursday night, just a jokey, idiotic “you up?” text that he sends just because he’s bored and restless and antsy and she’s the only person he wants to text anyway.

She texts back, tells him to come to her office at PGM. He should’ve known she’s working late. When did she ever give less than a hundred percent to a job. When did she ever give less than her absolute best, her total commitment. He wonders if Nan knows how lucky she is. Or if Logan knows how much he fucked up.

There’s a bored security guard at the desk and he buzzes Roman up, like he’s expected. The thought makes unexpected warmth tingle in his belly. Whatever else happens, she’s up in her office, waiting for him. He can even pretend it’s like old times. Her office is up on the top floor. He wonders if she’s ever had to step foot in an office on a single-digit level. Maybe she doesn’t even know what buildings look like from four stories up. Maybe she’s only ever seen the top of the New York City skyline.

Her office isn’t hard to find, it’s the only one on the whole floor with a light on. He bumps into the corner of a desk, gets out his phone for the soft glow to help him navigate towards her. Her coworkers have some seriously ugly shit on their desks. There’s a picture of a kid who will definitely cost his parents thousands of dollars in dental work. It strikes him that might be the best picture of their kid that they have. “Ugly fucker,” he says, with a shake of his head. At least he’ll probably be rich.

The door is open, the walls are glass, it’s just like Waystar Royco, and he wonders if everyone knows just how similar everything is, once you get to the top rungs. No company is better than any other. He leans against the doorframe and she looks up, glasses perched on her nose. A sight he’s seen a thousand times before, but one he hasn’t seen for a while. Her shoes are off, and he tries to remember the last time he saw her bare feet.

Maybe on the yacht in Croatia. He can’t remember. It feels like something he should remember. Some mark of their intimacy he’s forgotten.

“I guess the rumors about the cloven hooves aren’t real,” he says, tries for a lofty grin on his face, worries he’s only managed something like a grimace. His cocky smile feels foreign, sometimes, from a different lifetime, from another person. He’s not the Roman Roy he once was, but no one seems to know.

She doesn’t look embarrassed, but her toes curl slightly, digging into the carpet. “What makes you think Satan can’t change her shape?”

That makes his spine sag, makes his nerves calm, it feels like old times. Or like this new time they’re in, but better. Better than before. Better than the nothing, than the emptiness where they didn’t talk. There’s a half-empty glass on her desk, amber in the low light. She looks tired, like she’s been staring at a screen for too long. He doesn’t know if she ever actually stops looking at screens, at her phone, at her computer, always plugged in to something.

“So?” he asks, moving into the room, perching on the arm of a chair. He thinks about flopping over, about swinging his legs over the arm of the chair. If they were in his office, he would. If they were in her old office, he would. He doesn’t know the rules for this place.

“So what?” she says, coming around to sit on the edge of her desk, and all he can do in that moment is think about kissing her, about her hands gripping the wood beneath her, knuckles white, and the way she would taste in his mouth, like the whiskey she’s been drinking, like a fucking delicacy. His own fingers grip the chair because he has to have some kind of control, even if it’s shitty, and he doesn’t want to come all over her office. Not yet, anyway. Not until she asks him to, at least.

“Why am I here?” he asks, and the words sound strangled in his throat because it’s all he can do to keep himself together, to hold all the shards that want to spill out, to stop from kneeling at her feet and licking his way up her thighs. It hit him like a fucking train, unexpected and hard, this closeness between them, how it’s just the two of them, with the whole world laid out beneath them. How easy it would be to pretend that nothing has changed. But he doesn’t think that’s what she wants.

“You’re the one who won’t stop texting,” she says, and her eyebrow is cocked, and he thinks that he would fall over himself to get to her if she just crooked that one finger, the nail still rounded and clean, and he doesn’t even know when she has the fucking time to get _manicures_ but somehow she must fit it in.

“You were the one who _stopped_ texting,” he answers, and it doesn’t mean anything, really, and they could play this game for hours, just going around and around, and ending with the fact that he’s the reason they’re in this position, that she’s not around anymore. He did that. “Did you miss me?”

He thinks he sees something on her face, like an emotion or something, just really quickly flitting across her eyes, and then it’s gone, and maybe it was never even there. Or maybe this means something to her too, and she’s been spending time trying to figure out how it works now. He has no idea. They don’t work alongside each other anymore. Parallel but never touching, that’s how it feels. Just a few streets apart and the Grand Canyon between them.

But he feels like it’s shrinking. She told him to come here. That’s new. That’s better. That’s something.

“Oh yes, Rome...an,” she says, adding the second syllable of his name as an afterthought, and he thinks he’ll replay it in his mind for the rest of the week. How she almost let herself slip into old habits. Not always fucking perfect, not always in control. If she’s blushing, he can’t tell. “I missed the fuck-up so much that I just couldn’t bear it.”

There’s a thread in her words that makes him think it’s true. That makes him think it might be an invitation. And when he stands next to her, when they’re eye level and toe-to-toe, she doesn’t back down. “How could I miss the man-child who almost ruined my career? The asshole that’s more cock than human.” He can smell her, can smell the day’s work on her, the way her deodorant must have stopped working an hour or so ago, the slight musk that hangs around her, the whiskey on her breath.

“How could you?” he asks, and he means to sound light-hearted and easy, isn’t sure he does, isn’t sure of anything in these taffy moments. “No one would miss that.” When he looks down, it almost seems like her hand is fisted against her skirt, her legs crossed at the ankles, those bare feet pale against the carpet. He nudges one foot with his loafer and thinks how small it is compared to his shoe.

There’s silence, as loud as any yelling ever was, and then he can see how she shutters herself up, how the professional demeanor takes hold once more.

He leaves shortly after, doesn’t even know why she even texted him back in the first place.

-

She texts him the next day, says they should have dinner. Says it like a command, not a request, but it’s not like she didn’t know what the answer would be. She knows he’ll always say yes to her. And he’s just grateful she holds that power delicately, not in a fist.

So they have dinner, like a real fucking dinner in a restaurant and other people around, and a waiter who is too eager to tell them the specials. She gets salad and he gets soup, which spills on his shirt, a drop of cream in the middle of white. Gerri smiles, like a real smile, and dabs the corner of her napkin in her glass of water, presses it against his shirt, and he tries not to feel like a giant kid, first time sitting at the grown ups table.

“I’m leaving PGM,” she says, when their entrees arrive, hot plates sitting in front of them. She doesn’t sugarcoat, doesn’t preamble, just says what she means, and he’s always liked that about her. One of many things, maybe. Definitely.

“And do what? Get a fucking farm in Montana?” She won’t work for the Roys again, he knows that, feels certain of it. Time and too much whatever.

She wipes at the corner of her lips with her napkin, with the same napkin that she dabbed his shirt with. The thought makes him feel warm, almost cozy. Like the equivalent of holding hands. Not that he’s ever held her hand. He assumes it’s soft. He’s staring at her hand when she says, “I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe nothing.”

“You’ve never done nothing in your life.” He doesn’t know that for certain, but she’s never done nothing as long as he’s known her, anyway. The only time he’s seen her truly still is when she’s asleep, and even then he thinks her brain is probably still moving at a million miles an hour.

“Always time to try new things,” she says, and her eyes watch him like she’s waiting for him to say the right thing. And he’s still not sure what that is, what that even means. What’s “right,” where they’re concerned? What fixes things? What makes them whole?

He doesn’t even know if that’s what she’s asking, but he feels like it might be, feels like maybe it’s time for him to try something, to take the lead, to stop waiting for her. Maybe this is how she’s telling him she’s tired of waiting. That she’s moving on unless he can give her a reason to stay.

Maybe they can figure out a way to stay, together. Whatever the fuck that means.

-

It takes him a week before he gets the balls to call her, to tell her to meet him in a bar. It’s dark and they have a round booth, and she doesn’t sit next to him, but she doesn’t sit across from him either. Some kind of happy fucking medium that he tries to find hope in. She gets a martini and he gets the same, because it’s easier, and because if she decides to shit on the whole thing and throw a drink in his face, it won’t stain his shirt.

He can’t actually imagine Gerri Kellman throwing a drink. Too controlled. But he can bet she’s thought about it. Probably has a secret dartboard in her home that she takes shots at instead, secretly, where no one can see what she really thinks.

“What if we do something?” he says, when they’ve each had a sip, when she’s just looking at him, her eyes catching the light of the candle in the middle of the table, all blue and shiny and, like, condescendingly _patient_ , like she’s waiting for him to confess cutting off a girl’s pigtail or gluing someone’s phone to their desk.

“Something?” She’s going to make him fucking spell it out and he knows it and it makes him want to hide under his bed, but he can’t be the monster anymore, he has to say the words, because he needs to show her, needs to prove to her, that he’s different. That he’s better.

“Fuck shit up.” He doesn’t look at her, just traces the rim of his glass, because he feels like he’s been pulled out and twisted like a lemon rind, but he can imagine her smile, because he practically has it tattooed on his eyeballs. Just that curve of her lips, that devilish glint she gets, that tinge of goodwill and humor that’s so rare on her face.

“We once made plans to fuck shit up,” she says and he’s transported to the yacht, to the smell of saltwater, to the way the wind made her hair blow around her face. To the way she felt next to him, solid and real, like it was forever. He’d traded one hostage situation for another, chaining himself to his family just as surely as he was trapped in a chair in a hotel in Turkey. And she was the only thought in his mind that gave his life any meaning. Because she took enough time to believe in him. Or whatever.

“We did,” he agrees, and thinks that he’d trade the last year of his life if it meant he could take the joke from the boardroom back, if it meant that they could go back to that moment. He’d trade two years of his life, any two. It’s so fucking stupid to say it, but he’s not sure he’s worth anything without her. It’s dangerous to think it, so genuinely fucking _scary_. It’s almost romantic, and if it was anyone but the two of them, he’d say it. If it was anyone but the two of them, he’d give her roses and champagne and chocolate covered strawberries. But that’s not who they are. They’re just two people who found each other.

“So?” she asks, and he knows he’s got to make the steps, that she’s spent too much time waiting for him to catch up, pulling him along behind her, and now. Now he’s got to make the journey to her side on his own, because she won’t wait.

“We could still get married, you know, if you want,” he says, and she smiles, the corners of her eyes wrinkling up. She doesn’t say yes, and she doesn’t say no. She just watches him. “I think we should fuck shit up again. Together. Like. Partners. Business partners. Or whatever. Partners with benefits.”

“Partners with benefits?” she says, and her knee just touches his, a little prickle of electricity jumping over to him.

“Yeah, like. Midnight calls where I fuck up my carpet and you get to yell at me without getting in trouble. And then we sit next to each other in a boardroom and make little men in suits cower before us. That kind of shit. Or, I don’t know. Whatever you think.” He feels itchy, anxious, just waiting for her to say whatever it is she’s going to say.

“Or you come over unannounced and spend the night in my bathroom?” Her lips are quirked.

“I didn’t always sleep in the bathroom,” he says, sounds petulant to his own ears. He’s slept in her bed, fallen asleep curled away from her, woken up alone, to the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen. He remembers thinking that she must have been a good wife, whether or not she believes it. At least at the little things. They could do that, he thinks. Coffee in the morning and drinks in the evening, and they fill the space in between with whatever they like. “Whatever you think,” he says again. “Just the two of us doing it together.”

She smiles.


End file.
